If you cross the borders and enter into this swamp-nation, you will instantly be transformed into a pitiless ideological zombie. You will be shouting at everything. You will be angry, sunrise to sunset, and then into the night. Even under your blankets and the ominous, blue glow of your phone, you will still be furious, your brain in terrible flames. Twitter knows this and is now trying to encourage civil behaviour, both by cancelling offensive accounts, and nominating “well-behaved” people for “Sainthood.” Sainthood is nothing more than a halo emoji that appears beside your name, but Twitter is hopeful it might catch on and help put out the still burning swamp fire. Here are a few of the people who recently received a halo emoji:

Dr. Oz was on.
Somebody talking about nuts
Which ones were good for you, which ones were bad.

We were a rapt audience in the waiting room, each one of us happy for the bland distraction, but also sincerely curious. Something had happened in our lives that had changed us. We’d all crossed a line, moving from our natural selves to the types of people who now hoped if only they ate the right kind of nuts then everything would be okay. A woman leaving the clinic stopped and looked at me. Having noticed the oxygen concentrator on my back she abruptly said, “I HOPE YOU DON’T SMOKE!” I assured her that I didn’t, that I had quit, and as I was saying this the person who had accompanied her said– in a voice meant to convey to us that we should think of this woman as a child–“It would be great if you could quit, too, Beverly! Maybe this man can tell you how to do it?” And we all stopped watching Dr. Oz. We all stepped from our anxieties. No longer thinking of ourselves as people who needed to be helped, we thought of ourselves as people who needed to help. And in this, we were released. The grief that had hung in the room dispersed, and as if by saintly intent, we were left there, still and light for a moment, the tv flickering irrelevantly in the corner.

A crowded patio at night.

The man has sturdy legs and broad shoulders. He’s handsome and looks comfortable in his own skin, like he’s very good at whatever it is he does for a living and is used to moving fluidly through the world. Behind him, holding his one hand with her two, is a blind woman. She is stunning in her beauty, radiant, even. Looking at her it feels possible that a mountain stream had assumed the form and flesh of a woman and appeared amidst us like a miracle. Those of us who are watching her have no conscious choice in the matter. There is something that pure and commanding about her beauty.

She’s blinking awkwardly into the lights above the bar as the man explains the topography of the patio she is trying to navigate through.

“There’s some uneven ground here, and then a slight step up. You okay?”

She nods wordlessly.

As they pass through the thicket of tables and chairs and people, every set of eyes are upon her. Conversations are falling silent, heads are turning and imaginations are sparking. Everybody is watching, trying to enter into the mystery of her life, trying to understand the uncanny sense of relief– of hope, even– we all felt in seeing a person so unable to apprehend her own powerful beauty, a person so unsullied. She moves through us like a saint through fire, and maybe she feels our eyes upon her, feels the hunger and predation that haunt a bar like this, but maybe, perfect in her own wilderness, she feels nothing. She moves closer to the man as the level of spatial complexity increases, dropping one hand from his and letting it idle in the back pocket of his jeans.

And just beyond them a red traffic light sways above the intersection while a bat swoops down through the night and across the clear, crisp moon. Each person there wanting to tell her about the moon, the beautiful moon, and how hopefully we’d throw ourselves into that unknowable night, just to touch it’s face.

returning to the hospital always feels like stepping into a church, into the holy. Everybody there, whether they know it or not, are in a state of pilgrimage, of prayer.

In the atrium a motley assembly of musicians formed. They were a group of people recovering from mental health and addiction issues, with a few ringers tossed in to add some structure to their compositions. The conductor, an energetic and wiry tangle of holistic cliches, worked hard to inspire her students but most of them remained tense, staring flatly at the floor rather than the crowd that had gathered across from them. Their voices were thin and straining, but still, the congregation rose with the music, an original composition called, “Coming Through Darkness.”

And how did they do that?

How did each one of them push trauma to the side to stand where they were that day?

Oh Lord, let their music, that glowing idea, comfort us all.

And then down the hallway there was a display of art created by patients as part of their therapy. Out of all the generic scenes of landscapes and flowers and pets, there was one work that stood out to me.

Mary of the Roses.

As if floating above the others, as if shining.

And I imagined the woman painting it, how with each brush stroke another layer of her anxiety fell away until this new, beatified horizon emerged.

As I left the hospital, a First Nation’s man beating a drum stood outside on the sidewalk, the flames painted on a food truck rising behind him.

We nodded at each other and I remained, watching and listening, as steams of indifferent people passed by.

A tall, homeless man shuffled down the sidewalk and when he walked into the music, without a word he started to dance. First with his fingers. Slow pointing. Cool pointing. And then his body began to move.

His shoulders, his legs, his fingers, his head, all in surprising and beautiful concert with this simple drumming. Suddenly, he was the revelation of hidden genius–he was a burning bush in our midst. He danced for perhaps a minute and then he stopped, and falling back into the broad, rigid silence from which he came, he continued silently through the day.

There was something that seemed miraculous about this, and the drummer and I– the only people who had seen it– grinned at one another.

“It’s part of the magic of the flow, “ the drummer said. “I like to do this in front of the hospital. People are scared and preoccupied, and then they hear the drum calling to their spirit and it lifts them. Spirit takes them places, it unhooks them from their mortal self and for a moment they are free.  We are signposts in this world, here to help people find their way.”

Miracles, right that moment, unfolding all across the city.

Recently, he’s gone so far as to start referring to the man as Saint Donald, and as absurd and even ironic as this strikes the vast majority of the populace, people have been reporting miracles involving Donald Trump for quite some time:

A golfer who lives in Anaheim claims to have seen an apparition of Donald Trump floating above the 13^th green at the prestigious Trump National Golf Club. Normally, the golfer would have laid up and played for a par, but the Trump apparition seemed to be telling him to go for it, and so he did, holing the 260 yard shot for an eagle. “It was a damn miracle,” Chip Anger said, “I’d never done anything like that in my life.”

It was reported the Donald Trump came upon a Miss Universe contestant taking a bath and that she tried to entice him to bathe with her.

However, she was not Donald’s type, as he does not like small breasts, and so he refused, but not wanting to leave the young woman devastated, he turned her bath water into Trump Super Premium Vodka.

An evil and disgruntled contestant on The Apprentice had been making designs to assassinate Donald Trump, as she was certain she was to be the next who was to be fired. While in the boardroom she poured some poison into his glass of Trump brand water, and sure enough, just as Donald uttered the words, “Ereka, you’re fired!” his glass of water spontaneously shattered.

A man’s wife would not have sex with him. She would not even stimulate his genitals with her hand, and was planning on leaving him, so this man asked Trump for some advice on how to bring back her love. And Trump blessed a Trump brand steak for him, and said: “Serve your woman this steak, and after she has eaten of the Trump brand steak and tidied up, her lust for you will be huge.” And after the man had done that, his wife gave him great love, and it remained that she could not be far from him and was always eager to please him.

One day while some of his luxury condo dwellers were busy enjoying their opulent homes of burnished marble and luxurious platinum, all the power went out. When Donald Trump was told of this problem, flames, like flashes from a flint when struck, leapt from his tiny, vulgar fingers and all electricity was immediately restored.

Sitting on the sidewalk between the mailbox and garbage can was a man selling pens. He wore a red ‘Fly Emirates’ hat, had a distended tongue that protruded through his mouth, a tracheotomy tube sticking out of his throat and loosely bandaged hands. He was so low to the ground and positioned in such a way that it was difficult to tell if he had legs or not, and he gave the appearance of some wax creation melting into the grey concrete.

A chopper sounded unseen in the sky above, likely landing on the roof of the Children’s Hospital right around the corner. Somebody, all sorts of people even, were in the midst of the worst, most unimaginable day of their lives.

A handsome business man with an immaculately trimmed beard strode by as if on a catwalk. Standing about 6’3, he was resplendent in a perfectly fitted suit that he’d accented with a pair of beautiful Italian shoes and a pocket square. He spoke calmly into his phone as if he was in control and absolutely  everything  was  going  exactly  as  planned.

Walking toward him was a blonde woman who was just as thin as a blade. She was concentrating so hard on looking unattainable she seemed angry, like she was off to eliminate an enemy. Dressed expensively, she was so deeply articulated by fashion that it was hard to imagine anything existing beyond exterior.  Behind sunglasses and confident on high heels, as inky as a shadow she smoked–an image to be captured rather than a person to be spoken to.

It seemed that these two people, these two vectors of power and beauty, had been moving their entire lives toward this moment of collision, but they passed without incident or plot, and the man selling pens on the street beneath their indifferent gazes cast such a stark contrast as to feel like a biblical thunderbolt. 

Moving his mouth to no effect, he held out a pen to everybody who passed, but nobody stopped or even noticed him. Not a single person. He was beneath their sight line, both figuratively and literally, and may as well have been living in a completely different world.

A woman on crutches was standing near him. You could tell that she wasn’t sick– that she’d just had a minor accident and was still living in one world and not the other. But still, she was angry. She might have been angry about a lot of things. She was limping about very dramatically, exaggerating, exasperated that that the cab stand was 20 meters away. The beggar, wordless and unseen, waved a car over for her, and as one materialized, she limped furiously past, never noticing the blessings of the saint kneeling before her.

Two years or more, probably.

Stepping out of the car at the Port Stanley beach, I was hit by the smell of deep friers and sunscreen. Beachgoers played volleyball or tried to bronze themselves for the perfection that the cities they lived-in demanded, and children, like radiant beasts, played– their happiness a wildfire burning along the surf. Overhead the gulls flew, their shadows rippling along the sand, a kind of double life,

and then, looking forward, there was Lake Erie stretching out as far as you could see until it became sky.

Like the pilgrim I was, I walked down to the water. Standing up to my knees, an oxygen tank slung over my shoulder, I closed my eyes and held out my arms, waiting for something to wash through me and lift all the scars, bruises and fears of the last couple of years free from my body.

It seemed like a perfunctory, symbolic act rather than a felt one though, and I trudged back to our towels feeling a little disappointed. As I looked around I noticed a blind woman sitting nearby. Pale, thin and out of fashion, she looked like she had been confined to an indoor life of illness and uncertainty, and that this, this outing was a step outside of the protected, comfort zone she typically inhabited. But she did not look happy. She sat in a rigid, defensive posture, her face turned away from things, her fingers worrying some rosary beads she kept clutched in her hands.

I wondered if she was praying.

I wondered if I, too, had been praying when I stood in the water.

An older woman who must have been her mother sat next to her. She looked quietly off at the lake. And so the two of them stared off at separate horizons, the silence between them hanging there like a shared, unspoken disappointment.

After about fifteen minutes had passed they got up to leave. As delicate as a geisha, the blind girl slipped her feet into the sandals her mother had bought for her, and quietly taking her arm, began the journey toward the parking lot, never a word uttered between them.

As she moved from the hot sun and shifting sand of the beach to the level cement and cooling shade under a restaurant’s awning, she would not have seen the elderly and infirm arrayed there. Sitting silently in wheelchairs, each one with an attendant behind them, they all stared off toward the water. Bodies twisted and agonized, mouths hanging open and useless, it was as if they were waiting for a blessing or miracle. And the blind girl, so quietly it felt like she could have been floating, passed through them in her darkness like a saint through flame. It felt at that moment that a message was being delivered, and that everybody there that day, summoned by something just beyond the water, were gathered to receive it, but try as we might, it would elude our mortal grasp.

Every culture, language, disposition and illness imaginable was there, all lumped together. There were police officers guarding jittery prisoners, old, African women wearing tribal dresses spitting into clay pots, thick-necked Eastern European men with narrow eyes, a furious construction worker with a broken arm and a smirking teen with an infected belly button piercing. Nurses, tough as nails, stood like fire hydrants and shouted down anybody who tried to intimidate their way past triage, while cocky EMT workers, like bodyguards, struck poses around them.

A few affluent people who felt they didn’t belong there looked inconvenienced and glowered busily on their cell phones, every once in awhile looking up, hoping to find the eyes of somebody else who shared their dissatisfaction with customer service, while dotted amongst were the homeless, some of whom were just looking for shelter. They were aware of the disgust the entitled felt about sitting amongst them, and one of them, a holy and ruined man of 60, was an oracle. He issued forth a stream of undirected words, each one burning with some combination of genius, madness and menace, which then hung in the room like the smoke of prophecy.

Toronto, like a lot of cities, or at least by virtue of the way a lot of us assemble in cities, is a de facto gated community. Here, the gate was open. There was something almost Medieval about the scene, the squalor of it, our suffering so intimate and visible, our secrets now manifest. There was no separation of our humanity or of our innate and arbitrary vulnerability—we were all just there, hoping for intervention and mercy.

This, of course, is the destiny of each one of us, but it’s rare that we catch a glimpse of it. We don’t see or share in the suffering of other people on a daily basis. Those people, the sick, scared and wounded, are behind closed doors, and we just imagine that they don’t exist, or that they inhabit a land we will never visit, but this isn’t true.

I was driven to the ER by a cab that day, and I could see the driver’s eyes in the rear view mirror, concerned, looking back at me. (It turns out I had a respiratory virus that was making it very difficult to breathe.) I’m sure he could see that I was scared, and gently he began to speak to me, “It is okay, you are going to be alright, my friend, I can see that. You are going to be fine. Okay? No, I do not need your money. It is my pleasure to have the opportunity to help.” He smiled at me and nodded his head, “Yes, go now, get better, you have a life yet to lead.”

It was as if a saint had taken me in transit, and his blessing, his encouragement was a beautiful miracle unto itself.

********************************************************************

Westminster Dog Show just happen in New York City.

Big deal in canine world.

Westminster is for dogs what Academy Awards is for two-leggers. Everybody hate show and think stupid, but all like to sit around and make fun anyway!

Good times.

These Heidi thoughts on some of dogs at Westminster:

Mearle

Mearle very stupid dog. Tell by eyes and moron flop to ears. Not much upstairs for Mearle. No way could catch squirrel and probably no understand beg. Think Mearle maybe hit by car and that why so dumb. Probably looking at ceiling fan.

Lucy

Lucy big slut. Tongue out like trying to be all seductive while throwing innocent, come hither look. So fake! Slut Lucy just want treat, she no love you!! Lucy not even that good-looking. Heidi think maybe 6 out of 10, and collar she wear show she trying WAY too hard. Heidi hate Lucy. Whore dog who sex with cats.

Gracie

Oh, look at St. Gracie! She so holy her likeness should be on a cushion! What miracle you do today, Gracie? Gracie pee! ? Oh Gracie, surely you agent of God! Ha! Gracie saint of snobbery! She think she better than everybody, but she just a pretentious faker! Hope she get head caught in wall and everybody in world forget about her. Stupid dog, bad dog!!

Selah

Selah look nice, I guess. Friendly, like probably share toy.

Bug

Bug think he all macho and handsome Alpha stud. Heidi agree. Bug have perfect coat, Heidi just lose herself in rich, yet symmetrical tapestry of colour! And Bug eyes?! Dreamy. Such a strong and muscular dog! What Heidi would give to have Bug’s tongue lick her coat! Oh, Bug can be Heidi’s best in show all night long! Bug can pull Heidi’s sleigh any day of week! Golly, Heidi having spell, feel hot and need to run in circle a bit!

Eisous

This is completely retarded dog. Almost feel sorry for it. Very serious mental illness. Heidi don’t even understand name. Eisous? WTF? Heidi stay away from that dog, cross street to avoid it. Might be possessed or addicted to bad drug and Drano. Has self-harmer written all over it, probably bites off own fur. Show business very dangerous, many pitfalls and temptations for celebrities!

Rob: You hear about the fucking cronut burger????

Me: It’s all anybody in Toronto can talk about!!

Rob: It’s a fucking doughnut that’s been bred with a croissant and a bacon cheeseburger! I want to eat about seven of them!

Me: It’s made 100 people sick! The city (YOU) shut down the stand at the CNE!

Rob: No way! That doesn’t sound like the free market! Gonna fuckin’ look into that. Gotta let the people decide.

Me: I love the word cronut.

Rob: I love being drunk.

Me: Me, too, buddy, me, too.

Rob: Cronut, it sounds like the fart noise you make after you drink chocolate milk.

Me: It sounds like the name of a military transport vehicle.

Rob: Or like the sound of fucking Hulk Hogan’s arm breaking when I arm wrestle him on Friday!!!

Me: You really doing that?

Rob: It’s what Da Mayor’s got to do. Can’t back down from bullies. Rule numero uno. It’s good fuckin’ governance.

Me: You should get him to eat a cronut before the match so he’s poisoned and weak.

Rob: Good thinking, gonna get my people on that, make a cronut task force. Get special cronuts for Hogan. He’s a bitch.

Me: He’s a big bitch

Rob: Like his daughter, tho. She be spicy! Anyway, I like this cronut game. Let’s keep playing!

Me: Cronut: A verb, slang for shitting the bed.

Rob: LOLLOLOLOLOLOLLLOO!!!

Me: The Cronuts: the name of an Improv comedy troupe.

Rob: Cronut: the sound your head makes when ur really drunk and you fall down!

Me: Saint Cronut: The patron saint of irony.

Rob: Cronut: The sound two reporter’s heads make when you fucking bash ‘em together!

Me: Cronut: The traditional Serbian ceremony performed when a boy passes into manhood.

Rob: Getting a cronut: What you say when you mean you’re going out to score drugs!

Me: My Little Cronut: A pet name for your lover.

Rob: Rusty Old Crunut: What you call a crack whore.

Me: Okay, I gotta go to bed. Rob, great chatting with you, and remember, you’re just governing the shit out of this city. Keep up the good work!

Rob: Don’t I know it!  Alright, think I’m gonna go get me a cronut right now, gotta stay alert, get some of the cronuts for my arm wrestling thing! Fuck Hulk Hogan!!! Fuck him!!! Wonder if his daughter will be there?